ROFILE: JOSÉ CORONA, INNER CITY ADVISORS

José Corona’s funky workspace suits him fine. The cavernous building on Fourth Street in Oakland’s industrial downtown once functioned as mayoral campaign headquarters for Jerry Brown. It features a bar, a loft, some mismatched furniture, and the requisite conference room. Corona, CEO of Inner City Advisors(ICA), is a long way from his roots in the strawberry farms of Watsonville.

“Weekend, school vacations, it meant working on the farm,” Corona recalls.

But the CEO was blessed with a father of uncompromising entrepreneurial spirit. “We moved from Mexico to Southern California in the 1970s,” Corona recalled. “My father was part of the brocero program.” Translation: backbreaking work picking strawberries and other crops in the fields.

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